A Trip to the Tailor

Because I have only one pair of pants that currently fits me (despite my recent frappaccino craze), yesterday afternoon I hit the backstreets behind my apartment in search of a tailor. I unfortunately can't afford to buy all-new pants so I must do what the rest of the world does: Get things fixed when they stop working.  Very un-American of me.  Anyway, being Hispanic, I like my pants to be so tight I have to lay down to zip them, and the thought of walking around with huge, clown-looking pants is too much to bear.

My search was rather short; within five minutes, me and my pants-stuffed Colombian mochila found ourselves at the steps of a certain Mr. Valasquez, the "clinical tailor" offering "everything from treatment to surgery of clothing."

Mr. Valaszuez's shop is located on 20th and 4th, a somewhat dilapidated, graffitied and seedy street characterized by an unavoidable and penetrating seafood smell eminating from the many Pacific restaurants that make their home there. Across from one of these such restaurants (with their plastic chairs and tables and cafeteria-like atmosphere -- but that's another story) in a poorly maintained -- but still somewhat charming -- colonial-era house, behind a decrepit wrought iron door, I found Mr. Valasquez sitting behind an unstable, shaky wooden sewing table, in front of a yellowed, ancient-looking Singer sewing machine that sounded as if it was just barely clinging to life. I loved it.

To me, something about the word tailor -- sastre in Spanish -- sounds very old fashioned and noble. So it was only fitting that stepping into Mr. Valasquez's shop was like stepping back a hundred years in time.  The entire shop was appeared to be a mere 8ft x 8ft, spools of different colored thread sitting neatly on his work table, well-worn old wooden cabinents filled with various sewing tools and cut-off pant bottoms of varying colors and decades piled up a few feet high under his work table. And in the corner desk, with a white bushy beard, perfectly round glassses and deep, almost painful-looking wrinkles, sat a silent and expressionless man who I presumed to be Mr. Valasquez's father.  Had Salman Rushdie and Leo Tolstoy had a child, it would have looked just like that old man in the corner.

Mr. Valasquez's arhaic, formal language matched the old-time feel of his shop. Let me give you a little snippet of our conversation (Imagine a serious and poised middle-aged man with yellow measuring tape around his shoulders, spikey gray hair, a white, tucked-in turtle neck and brown trousers slowly and intently circling me while marking my pants with chalk where they need to be taken in):

Me:  Do you think you can take these pants in?
V:  But of course, su merced  (literal translation: your grace).  It is, of course, quite imperative that you try these fine vestiments on so that I may adapt them to your particular anatomy. I will explain to you the methodology I will employ in order to maintain the integrity of these pants while tailoring them just so to your body.

And so I left my clown pants at that little shop on 20th and 4th with the high hopes that Mr. Valasquez will work his magic (at $3.50 per pair) and return to me five pairs of pants that leave everyone wondering how someone like me can manage to squeeze into such mind-boggingly tight-fitting jeans.